By CHARLES POPE, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, June 15, 2004

WASHINGTON -- When President Bush swoops majestically into Spokane tomorrow aboard Air Force One to campaign for George Nethercutt, it will mark both a golden opportunity to raise money and an incredible bargain for the Republican who hopes to unseat incumbent Sen. Patty Murray this fall.

Bush will be the featured speaker at a fund-raiser that could bring Nethercutt more than $1 million. He also will fly with Bush from Washington, D.C., meaning he will be at Bush's side as they step off Air Force One, a priceless image that is likely to be reproduced in newspapers and television broadcasts across the region.

Best of all, Nethercutt will receive this bounty for a cost roughly equal to a handful of round-trip, first-class tickets from Washington, D.C., to Spokane. Taxpayers will pick up the rest of the travel costs.

Under a policy that is well known to presidents since Ronald Reagan but out of public view, taxpayers help underwrite expensive and explicitly political presidential trips if they also include an act that falls under the president's official duties.

In the case of Bush's two-day trip to Washington state, the political portion tomorrow will be combined with an official event on Friday at Fort Lewis in which Bush will speak about "new threats to the nation's security" and how the Army is transforming itself to deal with those threats, a White House spokesman said.

By including the Fort Lewis event, Bush saves the Nethercutt campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars it otherwise would have to reimburse the government if the political event was the only item on the itinerary.

Although it is entirely legal, the White House refused to detail the actual costs that would be borne by the campaign and by the taxpayers on the president's swing through Washington state. The costs are determined by a formula that takes into account the amount of time each event occupies, the type of political groups involved and length of travel.

A senior White House official said that in most cases, campaigns pay roughly the cost of a round-trip, first-class airfare for each person connected with the political event. The least expensive round-trip fair from Washington, D.C., to Spokane quoted yesterday was $2,000, meaning Nethercutt's share of the presidential travel could be as low as $10,000. The Nethercutt campaign would pay for his travel, the president's and three political aides who usually travel to such events.

Bush will speak at the Spokane Convention Center at a $1,000-a- plate dinner that a Nethercutt aide said could seat 2,000 people yielding a payoff of well over $1 million after expenses.

Secret Service and other security as well as essential personnel and equipment are always covered by tax dollars since the president is always on duty. Bush supporters and observers insist that the formula is fair, pointing out that the president must always be protected and be able to lead the nation. Therefore, he must travel with all the staff and apparatus needed to govern the nation, they say.

Even so, the topic is a sensitive one at the White House, and officials, following a practice used by the Clinton administration, declined to provide detailed cost breakdowns.

"A formula is applied that comes from regulations and policies that have been on the books since the Reagan administration and that breaks down in the sense that campaigns pay for the costs they would have incurred regardless of whether there is also an official event," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

While the actual costs are hidden, it is an undeniable bargain for the Nethercutt campaign. Taxpayers will pickup much of the cost of the trip, including the largest share of the $35,000 per hour cost of operating Air Force One and thousands of dollars per hour for additional costs to provide security and other support. In addition to the cost of Air Force One, a support staff that includes senior aides, the Bush physician and Secret Service agents often accompanies the president. A large Air Force cargo plane carrying communications equipment, more support staff, an armored limousine and if needed, his helicopter, also travels on presidential trips.

All of it adds up.

Congress' independent General Accounting Office, in a 2000 study, calculated that it cost $2.2 million for Clinton to travel from Washington, D.C., to Vancouver, B.C., for a two-day economic summit in 1997. That study also estimated that Air Force One cost $35,000 per hour to operate although on some trips it went as high as $56,000 an hour.

Whatever the cost, the travel rule has been aggressively exercised for years. Some analysts say that Bush has exploited it more than even Clinton, who was harshly criticized by Republicans for frequently linking political and official events.

"He takes a backseat to no one in terms of taking advantage of being able to mix political and official travel," said Larry Noble, executive director of Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan group that follows campaign finance, of Bush.

"It allows him to subsidize a lot of the real costs of those type of trips with taxpayer dollars," Noble said.

Democrats complain bitterly about the policy but seldom voice their concerns publicly since they would be able to take advantage once they win the White House.

Noble says the formula makes it appear that a campaign is absorbing a considerable share of the cost. "But in reality it's not," he said. "First of all, he only pays first-class air travel even though it costs a lot more. The only people he has to pay first-class travel for are the people who are directly related to the campaign travel. All the associated costs of everybody else are put off on the government side of things."

The most recent data filed with the Federal Election Commission show that the Bush-Cheney campaign reimbursed the government $273,525 for travel from Jan. 1 through March 31.

That total does not reflect, however, payments provided by other campaigns.

In the last six months of last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign reimbursed the government $362,497 for air travel, according to the FEC. During that same period, the campaign raised more than $100 million, much of it from out-of-town campaign events. In all, the Bush campaign raised more than $200 million.

Bush travels constantly, making dozens of domestic trips this year with a focus on such politically important states as Florida (more than 20 trips), Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Often he links an official event with a fund-raiser or political event. On May 21, for example, he delivered the commencement address at Louisiana State University in Baton Rogue, then skipped over to New Orleans to raise $2 million.

On May 17, he traveled to Topeka, Kan., to take part in 50th anniversary events for the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling that desegregated schools. He followed that event with a fund-raiser in Georgia that collected $3 million.

With fund raising for his re-election passing $200 million, Bush has turned his attention to helping Republican candidates, including Nethercutt, who is the first candidate challenging an incumbent to get an appearance by Bush.

Aides to Nethercutt say the visit is important because it will help raise money but, more important, introduce the Spokane Republican to parts of the state where he isn't well known.

"A presidential visit now will help us sustain our momentum and build on our early success," Nethercutt said last week when the trip was announced.